March 1st, 1951
Emile Burns, Editor, Communist Review.
The underlying letter was written January 31st. I hesitated posting it thinking that possibly I may have been unfair to you, but I have since read it a number of times and am convinced that what I say is only too true, that my analysis is correct. Therefore, I am taking this step of posting it to you. You are at perfect liberty, of course, of placing it before the Central Committee, but somehow I don’t think you will do that for there are too many honest and sincere Communists in it.
As usual, we seem to be worlds apart. I am sorry for this, even if it means you will go one way and I another. Have no doubt about it: either you and what you defend is right, or I and what I defend is right. You have admitted having no knowledge of linguistics, none of poetry, yet unhesitatingly you pass an opinion which I earnestly assure you, is downright silly. Surely it should have been apparent that when I sent the Thomson MSS to you I expected you to pass them on to experienced comrades?
Your brief note on the MS is very revealing. It shows that you will fight as hard and as cunningly as possible for the protection of the views of such Idealists as Caudwell, as Thomson. You will do the same for Maurice Dobb. You will use your influence to either drag Maurice Cornforth with you, or try to kill him through that weapon of capitalist methodology–the antitheses of Communist criticism and self-criticism–silence. For you and your people among the Party leadership have full control of all publication. You will be aided in this, in-so-far as Maurice Cornforth is concerned, by the affair of the two MSS. It is certain that Dr. John Lewis, one of your henchmen, furnished you with full details of this not so mysterious affair.
Go over our file, and see where you stood on the question of a mass Party under present conditions. You defended the impossible, even as you defended “the Committees to Increase Exports”–helping the capitalists out of grave difficulties! Am I lying? Is it not so? Check back and see what you and your spokesmen–such as Derek Kartun and James Klugmann–had to say about the New Democracies, via the pen of Kartun. You were ready, more than ready, to throw overboard Marx’s theory of value, Lenin’s concept of the Dictatorship of the Working Class, to substitute ”a new economic theory for the working class”. Am I lying? Is it not so? You accepted Varga, did I not protest at his articles when they were published in this country, before his denunciation at the Moscow Conference? Is it not a fact? Am I lying?
On the question of Professor Haldane, his vulgarisation of science. You protected him as long as possible on the ground “that a break with him might cost the Party a group of young biologists.” You failed to see, although I begged you, that such an attitude was rotten with opportunism, typifying the living spirit of the petty-bourgeoisie. You covered it all up by talking of “tactics.” God help such “tactics”!
The Party was in a position in 1947 to have led masses of workers onto the picket-line. The Savoy strikes, Grimethorp, Smithfields, Covent Garden, the Docks, Road-transport. Building, Engineering–the list is endless–proved that the workers were ready for such struggle. You let the opportunity pass because you thought–as you still do–that you would ’win-over’ the Labour Party, because you believed that Nationalisation split Britain’s economy into two segments, one controlled by the working class–through exerting pressure on the Labour Government–the other, the private sector, by the capitalists. You fell for a swindle. Is it not so? Did I not, at that time, bitterly protest? Am I lying?
During the last election your influence–its total unreality–led to a dispersal of our dwindling forces over the length and breadth of the land. If we had concentrated our forces, thrown them into battle on a few places most favourable to us–and fought primarily on the industrial front–we would have been successful in a couple of spots.
If my analysis on all these things has been wrong why haven’t you allowed me the Party press where you could easily have disposed of me? That you have taken me seriously is evident by our file. Why have you seen to it that even my letters to the DW, short as they always are, are heavily censored, or no; printed at all? Are these not facts? Am I lying?
Engels once said that muddle-headedness is one of the things the working class must combat. It is true, I think, that most of the comrades, even in the higher ranks, suffer from their lack of theoretical training, with you it is different. Too much has passed between us for you to remain indifferent to the policy you are ready to defend to the bitter end. A point is reached in personal history, as in the history of classes, where the issues at stake become relatively clear, where men know for what they are fighting. Tito knows what he is doing, even as Trotsky, Bukharin, knew what they were doing.
You have been proven wrong on issue after issue, on things that history has decided, yet the vanity in your head, that vanity that drives you so-called intellectuals along paths which leads to monstrous crimes against humanity, impels you to continue. You refused, and you continue to refuse, to place the Australian Letter before the Information Bureau, even as you refuse to place our correspondence. You are afraid of their judgment, you are fully aware that should they offer you judgment with which you disagree you would, as Tito, break away. And they, being wise comrades, are also aware of it. That is why they are silent, compelling you to defend what you are beginning to hate, Socialism and all it stands for.
A. H. EVANS.